REBURNING THE MAGIC CARPET
INTRODUCTION
The background of my research is the desire to learn and experience the world of performance art and to understand the presence of body within the creative process. I decided to approach this research to examine and recognize my abilities in this area, its implications on the process of personal creation and its effects on my sources of inspiration. This search led me to glass paintings by Ichikawa Etsuko. Ichikawa, born in Tokyo, Japan, currently living in Seattle, USA, is a multi-media artist who works with unconventional materials and with tight integration between product and performance. Her glass paintings were those who particularly attracted me. Her paintings are the burns of fiery glass on empty paper – a scorched drawing of light on a film.
Through body expressions and rounded glass drawings in her work, Ichikawa shares with us the connection between matter and spirit and between traditional culture and the momentarily-occurring present who makes its mark. The rounded shapes painted in a one-time chaos create a sense of continuity in the momentarily performance even in the final product.
As an immigrant who lives on the margin between two cultures, Ichikawa seeks to emphasize the presence of the connection between body, material and time harmoniously as far as blurring the physical boundaries. The unique pattern of her work, the powerful female presence and the use of natural materials such as glass and fire on a timescale were those who aroused my curiosity and my desire to explore and to trace the special moment of encounter between body and material and to imprint it with an inner burn.
THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
As a result of this inspiration, I decided to research and to experiment fire and glass, while personally adapting the method to my body and to my private sources of inspiration. After a short experience on paper, I felt that I was seeking a closer touch to the burning surface and decided to change the medium to a carpet, a rather more appropriate medium for a closer work. My choice of the carpet as a medium was influenced by its conception as a cultural symbol which carries colors, smells and long-standing traditions.
In Hebrew the carpet is also named Marvad (מרבד), a word related to a surface in which layers and coatings (רבדים) are hidden. The woman's role in magnificently weaving the carpet is depicted as early as in the bible (proverbs 31:22) " She makes herself coverings of tapestry (מרבדים); her clothing is silk and purple."
For me, the carpet symbolizes a bounded frame curbing practical uses by an artistic and aesthetic expression. Its multifaceted uses in various cultures, its stylistic-colorful artistic form and the prominent role of women in its weaving throughout history – they all pushed me to use it as a suitable medium for this work.
Through this medium, I wanted to examine how the performance taking place in the present, scorches and burns in the tradition of the past and creates a new-old product that remains to the future. I tried to inquire how I, as an artist, stands in relation to the different points in time: a heavy past of heritage, a momentary spark of fire, a scorched and burned future. In addition, I wanted to examine the meaning of the carpet as a means of practical coverage, and how can I, as a woman belonging to a tradition of carpet weaving, by tearing of the fiber, can reveal and rediscover the background, the secret of its weaving and its renewed connection to my life.
For me, this process constituted an experience of initial performance, in which the body and the very process are part of the art, not just the final product. I felt that this was an opportunity to explore the boundaries of body and the distance between the act of creation and physical expression. In fact, I conducted a personal study over my body and my sources of inspiration through the material, a study examining my abilities and ways of expression in a one-time style of art. Thus, I wanted to examine how the duration of combustion on different carpets affects the process, and what effect do the different results have on me and on the viewers.
RESEARCH PROCESS – THE PAST
During my research process I have examined glass as a raw material for a burning brush and the distance between body and material, while experiencing different material conditions of the molten glass on various carpets.
The process of working on the carpet was gradual and several attempts were made. In the first attempts I operated away from the carpet with a long iron rod and a small amount of glass, when my control over material and body was still lesser. Next, I began to slowly approach the carpet; I became less afraid and started to carry out the fire with a shorter rod and with a larger amount of glass. This process continued to progress to the point of standing on the very carpet itself while standing very close to the flames.
The different experiments were made with various types of carpets and various raw materials that express different aesthetic and practical styles. In order to examine how the process initially takes place, I have conducted my first attempt on a small, very simple cloth rug that can be used as a covering for both floor and other objects. Next, I have experimented with a variety of different bigger carpets, also relatively simple, that cover floors exclusively.
In the following stages, I held experiments with carpets of various sizes made of synthetic materials and cotton, some of which are used as religious ritual rugs. Each carpet reacted differently to the scorching glass and was burned in a unique manner according to its weaving structure and to the type of material from which it was produced. For me, every carpet symbolizes a different and unique meaning, a meaning which I have examined through burning.
Due to the long burning of the fire on the carpet, this stage was conducted with a protective suit. After a few minutes in which the flames flickered in a gentle dance and burst onto the carpet and reached where I wanted them to, I poured a bucket of water to extinguish the fire. The extinguishing added a new element of smoke and fog into the performance, a smoke that intensely stimulated the sense of smell and empowered the feeling of loss and suffocation. After drying the carpet in the sun, the process was done.
Every burn on the carpet was followed by collecting the scorched glass. As a result of the burning process, the glass had a special shape: many fibers from the carpet stuck in it and created a new mixture of materials together with the black and battered look. Each glass carries in it a different, surprising and strange texture that reflects by fire a description of the performance art, and so – attests to the entire process.
After thinking, I decided to take this strange compound of glass and cloth and "weave" it to a new carpet. This new carpet, which carries a variety of strange one-time shapes, creates a unified fabric of the various experiments made. By that I hope to recreate a new work, despite the act of burning and destruction, a work that tells the story of my personal world. When the piece was displayed, the new carpet – the fruit of destruction process – was placed on the floor, with the carpets damaged by the fire being rolled up next to it.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS – THE PRESENT
As an initial performance work, working on the carpet as a medium full of meaning revealed to me the intensity and importance of the raw material in the creative process. The experience of fire-drawing in a very close process – using a protective suit to stand on the burning carpet itself – granted me a one-time experience in controlling the material and the moment of creation. I feel that during this process I have managed to realize the greatest closeness between the material and the creating hand, a closeness I wanted to understand.
In such a process, the entire body becomes part of the creation act and imprints its mark in the final product. In a poetic manner one might say that during the creative process and the body movements, I have burned and scorched myself to the carpet and to the tradition from which I arrive. The multisensory experience in a medium carrying a cultural symbol aroused me with thoughts about the background from which I arrive to the act of creation: family tradition, nation, religion, and above all – my stand as a creative woman.
Burning the fibers and tearing them with the burning glass conducts for me a renewed melting of the act of creation, while imprinting a personal mark in the intergenerational fabric. I feel that in this process of clarification I have touched the roots of my soul, which originates the ore of my most personal creation. I grew closer to myself during each and every experience. In a slow and prolonged process, questions came up about the heritage and about my place in it as a one-time link: Can I take part in this heritage? What do I want to take away from it? Which parts of it I want to burn with a great flame, and which in a small flame? At what points in my soul am I ready to closely touch, and which of the I fear to approach and burn? Is there a work in fire and destruction? What does the black ashes and the stifling smoke symbolize compared to the shining glass?
Collecting the sooty glass and weaving it into a new formation conducts for me a worthy seal to the process I have gone through. The one-time shapes in which the glass pieces were formed indicate the variety of experiences and the various dimensions that accompanied the performance work and the entire process – dimensions of creation and destruction, bright and hot transparency side to side with charred ashes and smoke. The very carpet became a unique "magic carpet", concealing multi-faceted layers.
Alongside this new work, I chose to display the ruined carpets in a rolled form, a form showing a mixture of colors, soot and smells of the creative process. The carpets are placed on the floor without any barrier or podium, in order to bring the viewer closer to the whole process, that was executed on the floor. The carpets are not the final product, but they constitute an essential milestone in the creative process after the destruction and ruin. Their importance in the total process is expressed by this presence-absence dualism.
Through weaving and delimiting the new carpet, I wanted to express the meaning of the area covered. The Hebrew root of "שטיח" (carpet) is שט"ח, as in the word "שטח" (area), so that each carpet creates a different square frame and a unique border of an area. During the creative process, I confined myself to different areas of personal experiences and to different places that I have experienced throughout the world.
Through the re-alignment of the personal carpet, I try to focus the width of the worlds from which I come in order to create a "boundless" personal square. This inner-outer glass carpet of body-time-material externally displays in the colors of an ancient tradition a scorched woman who burns in a personal inner flame, a woman willing to "burn herself" on her authentic and intimate way to rediscover her place in the world.
INTERMEDIARY CONCLUSION - FUTURE THOUGHTS
When I first investigated this issue, I was accompanied by a number of concerns related to the body expression and to the presence of body in the process, and now I feel that I achieved a better position on this journey. As an initial performance work integrating body, I arrived at a safe place, a stable place where I accept myself in a way I have yet never encountered in previous works, a place that strengthens and enhances my experience as a creative woman.
At this point in time new thoughts arose: How does this look to the outside observer? Did he understand the creative process and the meaning of the different raw materials? Have I managed to fully and powerfully express towards him the inner circle of time through performance? In the future I would like to examine whether it is possible to remove the protective suit and mask, in order to create an unobstructed eye contact between me and the viewer. I would like to examine how to control the geometric shapes of the newly created carpet, how to control the shape of the molten glass and whether it is worthwhile doing so. In addition, I wonder if there is another medium that allows a different style of experience, an experience that will connect me to other elements in my life.
The work aroused in me the desire to continue to examine the meaning of performance: Will I continue this path in the future, and if I would – in what way? What are the implications of this style in my future works? How can I express my personal thoughts that accompany the entire process in the final product of the performance-work?
Recently, I got in touch with Etsuko and sent her a letter about the inspiration her character gifted me. I explained to her my research efforts in various raw materials and expressed my desire to hear her opinion. Fortunately, she answered my letter and the relationship between us was formed. Etsuko was glad to discover about my attempt to trace her style and to add my personal touch, and she even invited me to visit her art studio to talk and to get an impression of her work. This closed an additional personal-cultural circle for me, a circle of strong female creativity that manages to express the way of body and material – infinite and unlimited time, time coming out of the carpet and weaving the yearning in the open space.
The pictures show the works of the Iranian artist Jalal Sepher
A POETIC EPILOGUE
How to open a carpet – by Yona Vollach
You should decide sometime to open a carpet
It is very hard to pull the fringes in their place so that its body would roll in its place
Or to pull the fringes in their place so that its body would roll from behind
Or to roll its body from the front to its place
Or to walk back and to roll its body as a carpet towards you
And to see the shape of carpet increases and to bump from behind, maybe.
In these beautiful words Yona Vollach asks, as a creative woman, how to open, but I ask – how to close, how to close a carpet.
It is very hard. How can one conclude in such little words the rolling movement of the body? The movement continuing away, moving forward and returning right away. Holding yet unhanding, pulling with a bunch of doubts, shapes and colors, that way or another.
The fringes of the carpet of time delude me, trying to bridge on the borders of the covered area, on the elusive location of my rolling body.
And maybe there is no way to decide, but only to walk back in a hesitating little step. to walk back and to roll its body as a carpet towards you. To roll the words on the tip of the flat tongue without punctuation marks, to keep asking where from and where to, in a movement that does not know: You should, sometime. A movement that looks again and again, only trying to see the shape of carpet increases.
A movement of a woman who knows that in this quest she might bump from behind, maybe, but moves forward with the question – How to open a carpet.
The pictures show the work of the Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed
